Common App Gratitude essay: weak and strong versions compared
One story, two versions: an essay that blends in with thousands of similar ones, and an essay that meets the standard of top US universities. We show exactly what sets them apart.
The student and the prompt
In 2022, a Ukrainian student moved to Ithaca, New York, and started at the local high school with limited English. In a PE class, a classmate called Rick threw him a ball and invited him onto his team. They became friends: Rick helped him choose his courses for the following year and brought him into the school cross-country team. Today the student volunteers with Ukrainian refugee children: he teaches them English, explains the American school system and tries to be a friend to them.
The essay responds to Common App prompt 4: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. For advice on choosing a prompt, see our guide “Common App essay prompts”.
The weak version
The Power of Friendship
Ever since I was a child, I have always believed that friendship is one of the most important things in life. However, I did not truly understand its meaning until February 24, 2022, when my life changed forever.
When the war in Ukraine started, my family and I had to leave everything behind. It was the hardest time of my life. We moved to Ithaca, New York, where I started studying at a local high school. My English was not very good, and I was very shy. I felt lonely and did not have any friends. Every day was a struggle, and I often felt that nobody understood me.
One day in PE class, we had to split into pairs for team challenges. Nobody wanted to be with me. Then an American boy named Rick threw a ball at me and asked if I wanted to be on his team. I had mixed feelings, but I agreed. This moment changed my life.
Rick became my best friend. He is a very kind, smart, and generous person. He helped me choose my classes for the next year so that I could get into a good university. He also invited me to join the cross country team, where I improved my endurance and learned the value of teamwork and discipline. He helped me with my English, introduced me to his friends, and always supported me when I had problems. I am very grateful to Rick for everything he has done for me. Without him, I would not be the person I am today.
Thanks to Rick, I realized that I want to help other people too. Today I volunteer to help Ukrainian refugees. I give them advice about adapting to life in the USA, teach English courses, and organize seminars about building a school profile, because the American education system is completely different from the Ukrainian one. Most importantly, I try to be a friend to these children, because I know firsthand how hard it is to find friends in a new environment. This experience taught me leadership, empathy, communication, and responsibility.
In conclusion, this experience taught me that one small act of kindness can change someone's life. Ukrainians around the world often need help, and children are often the most vulnerable group. My hope is that Ukrainian children abroad will be able to successfully integrate into society and achieve great success. I am thankful to Rick, and I will continue to help others, just like he helped me.
Five key mistakes
- The essay is about Rick, not the writer. A whole paragraph lists his virtues: kind, smart, generous. The classic trap of the Gratitude prompt is that the committee learns more about the person being thanked than about the applicant. But Rick is not the one applying.
- The most interesting moment is dismissed in one sentence. “I had mixed feelings, but I agreed” is the only real inner conflict in the story. It is named and immediately dropped: no scene, no dialogue, no detail.
- Clichés that could belong to anyone. “Ever since I was a child”, “changed my life forever”, “hardest time of my life”, “In conclusion”. Replace Ukraine with any other country and the text barely changes.
- A list instead of evidence. The volunteering is presented as it would be in the Activities List, without a single child, figure or moment. And “taught me leadership, empathy, communication” is a self-assessment that convinces no one.
- The war as a backdrop for pity, the ending as a slogan. The opening turns the writer into a passive victim, and the ending about Ukrainian children sounds like a declaration unconnected to his own actions.
The strong version
"Partner up."
In my first month at Ithaca High School, those were the two most frightening words in English. I knew what each meant separately. I did not know that together they meant thirty teenagers would turn to each other in one second, leaving me in the middle of the gym, retying a shoe that was already tied.
At home in Ukraine, I was the kid who picked teams. Here, I was the kid who rehearsed "May I go to the bathroom?" for an entire period before raising my hand. My English worked perfectly in textbooks and collapsed in conversation, so I stopped having conversations. By October, silence had become my personality.
That Tuesday, a basketball hit me in the chest before I saw it coming. A tall boy in a Buffalo Bills hoodie was grinning at me. "You're with me," he said. "I'm Rick."
I would like to say I was grateful. I wasn't, not yet. My first feeling was suspicion. For months I had been helped: by caseworkers, by a church that donated our couch, by teachers who spoke to me slowly and loudly. I appreciated all of it, and I was exhausted by it. Being helped had started to feel like being a project. I assumed Rick had spotted the refugee kid and decided to do his good deed for the day. I almost threw the ball back. Instead, mostly because I didn't know how to say "no, thank you" politely, I said "okay."
We lost the relay badly. Rick didn't seem to care. At lunch he waved me over. A week later he asked about my schedule for next year and stared at it in genuine horror: "You did calculus in Ukraine, and they put you in Algebra?" He sat with me and the course catalog for an hour, explaining a system no one had explained to me: that "AP" meant something, that colleges read transcripts like stories, that choices made at fifteen echo at seventeen. In the spring he told me the cross country team "needed bodies," which I later learned was not true. I finished my first 5K on the hills above Cayuga Lake second to last and, for the first time in America, laughing.
The surprising part of my gratitude arrived slowly. It took me almost a year to notice that Rick had never treated me as a project. He never asked about the war unless I brought it up. He mocked my accent exactly as much as I mocked his attempts to say "Zhytomyr." He was not helping me; he was choosing me. What I am thankful for is not the ball itself. It is that he threw it the way you throw a ball to a friend, not to a charity case. That difference, I have learned, is everything.
Now, on Saturday mornings, I stand at the front of a room at the Tompkins County Public Library. Twelve Ukrainian students come to practice English, learn what a GPA is, and hear why an American transcript cares about their sophomore year. I translate the system Rick once translated for me. But the part I care about most doesn't fit on a flyer. Last month, during a break, an eleven-year-old named Denys stood by the wall, retying a shoe that was already tied. I tossed him a tennis ball. "You're with me," I said. He almost threw it back.
Of everyone the war displaced, children had the least say in where they ended up. They receive donations, programs, and paperwork. What they need most is harder to organize: someone who chooses them. I cannot be that person for every Ukrainian kid abroad. But I hope they grow up here not as guests, but as people who belong, and that one day they will be the ones throwing the ball.
Why this version works
- It opens with a scene, not a thesis. “Partner up” and the shoe that is already tied convey the language barrier and the awkwardness in two lines, without the words “I was shy”.
- The “mixed feelings” drive the essay. Gratitude is not immediate: first comes suspicion – “being helped had started to feel like being a project”. This is honest, unexpected and mature.
- It answers the prompt directly. The prompt asks about being “thankful in a surprising way”, and the surprise here is specific: the writer is grateful not for the help, but because Rick did not rescue him – he chose him as an equal.
- Rick comes alive, but the writer stays at the centre. We see Rick through his actions and words (“needed bodies”, his horror at Algebra), without praise. The emotional arc belongs to the writer.
- A circular structure. The shoelace, the ball and “You’re with me” return in the scene with Denys, only now the writer is in Rick’s place. The ending is earned by the story rather than announced.
- Qualities are shown, not named. The words “leadership” and “empathy” never appear; the reader sees these qualities in the Saturday sessions at the library, the 12 students and the fact that the writer notices the child by the wall.
How strong is the story itself?
The storyline “immigrant with no English → a friend helped → now I help others” is one of the most common in US admissions, and many Ukrainian applicants now write about relocating after 2022. What makes an essay stand out, therefore, is not the plot but the execution: honest inner conflict and specific detail.
The strongest element of the profile is the volunteering, which shows initiative and real impact. The scale (how many children, over what period) belongs in the Activities List; the essay gives it meaning. The story suits the Gratitude prompt well, on two conditions: the “surprising way” must be explicit, and the writer must remain the central character. For how to build this kind of arc, see our guide “How to structure an essay”.
Key takeaway
- In a Gratitude essay, the main character is you, not the person you are thanking.
- Inner conflict is the most valuable part of a story: develop it rather than mention it in passing.
- Show your qualities through scenes and details rather than naming them.
Writing essays for US universities?
We will help you find your story, choose your Common App prompt and bring your essay and supplements up to the standard top universities expect.